From the Desert: Staying Put....Being Made New Where You Are

Someone asked Abba Anthony, ‘what must one do in order to please God?’ The old man replied, ‘ Pay attention to what I tell you: whoever you may be, always have God before your eyes; whatever you do, do it according to the testimony of the holy scriptures; in whatever place you live, do not readily leave it. Keep these three precepts and you will be saved.

- The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Benedicta Ward

Staying anywhere long enough has seldom been romanticized in human history. Our very literature, reflecting our deeper nature, often speaks to the newness of being somewhere other than where we are. Being a starving artist on the streets of New York or another big city, is seen as preferable to living in the more rural backwater sort of places. Going away to college or simply getting away from the place you've lived your whole life, it doesn't matter, anywhere is better than where you are now.

There is no question that the life of following after Jesus may involve a physical journey. Our Lord has no problem uprooting unsuspecting people from one place and setting them in another. He's got a talent for that. Yet, he has an even better power, perhaps even more transformational; he makes people new where they are.

When I moved to Wheeling in 2023, more than a few people were bewildered that I had moved to a place that they themselves wanted to move away from. They spoke about moving to Pittsburgh or moving south. I also met people that have chosen to remain here. People that made mistakes here but worked through them to become somebody wholly new in spite of others who may refuse to see them as anything but their past. In a sense they really did crawl back in the womb. Becoming new did not mean they had to do it somewhere else, it meant they had to be better where they already were. They needed fresh eyes, not fresh scenery. That's how the story is told isn't it? It's hard for people to see redemption if it's happening someplace else.

If you stay in a place long enough, you start to face yourself. I've been something of a nomad these last ten years. I love new places. I went from Florida to Illinois. Illinois to Missouri. Missouri to Iowa, and Iowa to West Virginia. Nowhere have I truly understood more about myself than my time in West Virginia, and I gotta tell you…it's hard. What I want to become in the Kingdom, constantly runs into the person I am. That's what makes staying put so important. When you stand still, it's easier to get a better picture of yourself. To notice what needs changing. To uproot is to start that process all over again. This isn't to say that movement isn’t necessary, particularly in cases of protecting one's mental health and fleeing from trauma inducing situations. Something's cannot produce fruit until they are in the right environment.

Sometimes staying put is about more than just learning to see ourselves. It's about remaining present for the people that have always been here. The people that may depend you for spiritual and material needs. In the Secret Seminary Fr. Brendan Pelphrey describes such a situation and how the Community of the Transfiguration approached it:

“These local poor are what the Community calls “God’s little ones.” Their poverty means that they have no choice about what to wear, or where to live, or what (if anything) they will eat. And it is this kind of poverty - lack of choice - which the Community has adopted as its own. Although some members of the Community may hold paying jobs, the income for which is shared, or primarily given way, the members will never earn more than what the pension would be for a local miner’s widow. Nor will the Community move away, because this choice would not be open to the locals who depend on them for spiritual support and love.”

This is an incredibly important ethic to adopt in a place like West Virginia where the state ranks near the bottom in categories such as healthcare quality, employment, infrastructure, and education.

To stay is to risk seeing clearly. To stay is to love people who remember who you were. To stay is to believe that God is not waiting somewhere else but is already here. If that is true, then perhaps the real pilgrimage is not away from where we are—but deeper into it.

I don’t know how long I will remain in West Virginia. But I am beginning to understand why staying matters. Not because this place is perfect, but because I am not. And it is here—among these hills, these people, and these limits—that God is asking me to become someone new. Not somewhere else. Not someday.

Here.

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This article is written by Network Writer Stefon Napier, and is crossposted from his personal blog on substack! To learn more about Stefon, visit his team page at https://www.kfmbroadcasting.com/team/napier-s. You can find his full library of writings on his Substack at https://stefonnapier.substack.com/